Transfering recorded videos via USB drive?

Question

I put a homemade video (no not a porno) onto one of my computers and tried to use Microsoft Video Maker thing but after I uploaded it onto the program and saved it, then every time I try and actually edit the video the program shuts off. So, I put it onto a Flash drive hoping that I will be able to transfer it to my Macbook and edit on that IMovie thing. But with all the luck, when I try to open it up it doesn't let me select it to upload it to the movie maker thing because it just appears grey. Do I need to change it to a different format or something for the Mac to register that its a video or what?

Answer 1

You did not say what the source of the video was. If it came from a hard drive camcorder or a flash memory camcorder or still camera, you may need to decode that MPEG2 format video using StreamClip. Go to

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/

search for Streamclip... download and install it.

iMovie will not recognize anything but the firewire port for bringing in video, so your trying to import off the USB port would not work - especially since it was not a camera connected.

Copy the file from the flash drive to the desktop of the Mac. Once you have StreamClip installed, launch iMovie and drag/drop the file (originally from from the flash drive, now on the desktop) onto the clips pane or timeline of iMovie.

If you are trying to copy a MovieMaker file, that probably won't work.

If the original camcorder is a miniDV tape based camcorder, all you need is a firewire cable (4-pin camera DV port to 6-pin Mac Firewire400 port) and iMovie will import it just fine.

Good luck!